Thursday, 20 September 2012

I'm Not Religious, I'm Just Quite SpiritualAsceticism has been a really amazing journey for meBrrrrrrrrr!!! Your aura's incredibly cold!Connectedness is when everyone holds hands and has a beautiful cryDenial is when people don't believe in fairies. It's really sadEverything is made of blessings. EverythingFasting is easy because I'm full of loveGlastonbury Tor is my Power PlaceHow am I? I don't think of myself as how I am; more how I am. You know?I feel really lucky to be so totally self obsessed awareJust to let you know: I have seven souls. Sometimes eightKarma is when people who are really poor were really bad in a past lifeLove = Joy = Peace = No more war! It's so simple! xxx My reiki teacher can see right through me. Literally. He's amazingNo room at the Negativity Inn!OmPairs Utility is an anagram of 'spirituality'. Need I say more?Qi, or ch'i, or chi, or ki. Or cheeseREAD THE ALCHEMIST. IT WILL COMPLETELY CHANGE YOUR LIFESelf-realisation has been so good for me and my relationship with myselfTranscendentalism has been so good for me and my relationship with myselfUniverse: do my bidding! (I mean that in a really gentle way)Very, very, very, very depressed. Please, someone help meWhen you ask the Universe for something, it always comes trueX-rays really fuck with your yin and yangYou are so nearly as spiritual as I amZoo

Thursday, 13 September 2012

H is a single mother of a
nine-week-old baby. She's been suffering from chronic depression and
anxiety because of various life experiences. Understandably, H has been quite
worried, since giving birth, that her depression will be aggravated further and
that she will start to display symptoms of post-natal depression or postpartum
psychosis. Thankfully, so far, neither has occurred.

Shortly before H gave birth, she made a claim for Employment
& Support Allowance (ESA) - a benefit for people who are not well enough to
work - on the grounds that she was depressed and anxious and unable to be
around people she didn't know very well. H was not told it would have been better for her to make a claim for Income Support as a lone parent; entitlement to this benefit, in H's case, would have been unequivocal.

H received her first ESA payment and was under the impression that her
claim had been finalised. She was not made aware that she would be required to
attend a work capability assessment with a medical professional and that only
after this assessment, would a final decision be made about her entitlement to
ESA.

H attended her work capability assessment when she was heavily
pregnant. Apparently, the medical professional assessing her had not been
trained in the welfare system because H was not advised, due to the imminent birth of her baby, to cancel her ESA claim
and make a claim for Income Support to which she certainly would have been entitled
and for which there is no medical assessment or points-based test that has to
be passed.

H had her baby. A couple of months after the birth, she sought
advice from a welfare rights specialist about any other money she might be
entitled to as a lone parent with health problems.

The caseworker called the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP),
as a matter of course, to check the amount of ESA that H was receiving. The
caseworker was told that H's ESA had been cancelled some weeks ago because she
had failed her work capability assessment and was no longer entitled. H had not
been written to about this and so was not aware that this decision had been
made. She had not checked her bank account for some time as she had been busy
with her new baby. Her only income at this point was Child Benefit and Child
Tax Credit amounting to approximately £80 per week with which she had to buy
food and household items for herself, nappies, formula milk and other
provisions for her baby, pay her bills and pay for public transport to get to
appointments to see her social worker and other people.

H was advised to make an immediate claim for Income Support and to
ask for it to be backdated to the day that her ESA stopped. The caseworker
talked to her about appealing the decision about her ESA but it was agreed that a
claim for Income Support was a better route because H was definitely entitled
to this benefit and the stress of an appeal where there was no guarantee of
success would have been overwhelming for H.

H was also advised to apply for a
crisis loan from the Social Fund while she was waiting for her Income Support
claim to be processed.

Some days later, H contacted her
caseworker in a state of panic to say that her application for a crisis loan
had been unsuccessful. H had been told that she was ‘not in crisis’ because she
was being paid Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit. Someone in H’s situation should
be receiving around £152 per week in benefits and tax credits. H was receiving
about half this amount and was spending approximately £20 per week on nappies
alone.

The caseworker tried to contact
the crisis loan department on the telephone in an attempt to resolve things
quickly but was greeted with the word, ‘no’ and the line going dead when she
said who she was and why she was calling.

H is now in the process of
appealing the decision about her entitlement to a crisis loan and is still awaiting
the outcome of her Income Support claim. This does not solve her immediate problem
of lack of funds because of poor knowledge and bad decision making on the part
of the people working within the services that were designed to protect her.

It was not OK for a H, new single
mother with complicated mental health problems, in an extremely vulnerable
position, to have been told that she was ‘not in crisis’ when she said she was. It was not
OK for people in positions of authority not to have noticed that it would been much better for this woman to have made a relatively simple claim for
Income Support rather than a long-winded, stressful, humiliating and
unsuccessful claim for ESA. It was not OK that H did not receive written confirmation of the decision about her ESA. It was not OK for H's caseworker to be greeted by a virtual brick wall during an attempt to help her.What's also really not OK is for David Cameron to say that he
wants to protect the most vulnerable in our society when there are very few, if
any, examples of what he actually means, especially given that H’s case is by
no means unique.

Thursday, 6 September 2012

Does anyone have a van to help me move at the weekend? If so, could you PM me your details ASAP? Ta.Does anyone have a red dress I can use for one night next week? I'm planning on going out in red and I don't have anything red, so... xxxDoes anyone have a digital camera I can borrow for my first time with Stewart? (Eek!)Does anyone have one of those things for getting staples out of stuff? I've got loads of staples in stuff and I need to get them out. It's urgent-ish.Does anyone have a gigantic house plant (and car) that they don't want any more? I mainly need the car.Does anyone have an entire orchestra's worth of instruments? I've just had an amazing idea to do with music!Does anyone have a baby I can borrow? Preferably for a few years?Does anyone have all the episodes of Neighbours, Home & Away and Eastenders? I need to watch them all quite urgently for a thing I'm doing about addiction, loneliness and overeating.Does anyone feel like helping me tidy up the mess I've made in my house? I got a bit cross yesterday and burned quite a lot of stuff. #oops.Does anyone have, like, an hour or so to spare once a week?Does anyone have a bed? In their room? That I can sleep in? With them?Does anyone have a healthy sense of boundaries that they could teach me?Does anyone have a bike, some masking tape, a wig, some sheets of glass, a bible, some coffee, a Kula Shaker CD, some ash, a cock stop, a banana a filing cabinet and a quid I could borrow for twenty minutes?Does anyone have any advice about anything? I mean just in general?Does anyone have about twelve of those little wooden scooters that are in the shape of various animals? It's for a kids' music/theatre/group show/workshop that me and Jonah and Jemimah and Juliah and Joshuah are doing.Does anyone have any idea where I am? All I can see is pylons if that's any help... Does anyone have some guns? I've really fucked something up.

Sunday, 2 September 2012

An elderly couple are on a bus.Woman I tell you who I'd like to see soon and that's BobMan Bob died. He diedWoman He died?Man Yes, he did. I didn't tell you because I knew that you loved him and I didn't want you to be sad before Julia's wedding